Pacific Northwest Shop Opens

Just in time for the holidays, there’s a new shop opening on Wallingford and 44th, the Pacific Northwest Shop. It’s the first branching out from the original Tacoma location for the store, but is spearheaded by Matt and Cedric from Phinney / Ballard.

I’ll give the mic to Matt Evans to say a few words:

My parents, Bill and Ann, began the business in 1978 and still own it today. After many years away after college, I returned to the area in 2014 with my husband and began helping my dad manage the store in Tacoma – my mom worked in another gift shop that they had until recently selling it to my brother and his wife.

Today, my husband and I hope to purchase the Pacific Northwest Shop from my parents. My niece has also worked in the store for several years and now helps as an assistant manager in Tacoma. Of course, we also rely on great staff members to pull it all off. We sell in our store, on our website, and on Amazon.

Our focus is on products made in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and BC. We also have a couple of products from southern Alaska and western Montana. The product mix includes food and candy; soaps and lotions; t-shirts, sweatshirts, and hats; cards; books; prints; jewelry; and home decoration items like candles, glass, and pottery.

Cedric, my husband, and I live in the Phinney/Ballard area. He works in Seattle, but I’ve been commuting to Tacoma to work in the store. For about a year we’d been thinking of opening another store. But we only began truly searching for a location in early 2017.

In Tacoma, our store is located in the Proctor District. It’s a great little commercial district with elementary and middle schools, a library, a post office, two grocery stores, and dozens of storefronts. We wanted to find a similar setting for our second store. We look in many neighborhoods and, by a stroke of luck, came upon the place we’re leasing in Wallingford. My husband and I were out for our anniversary dinner and happened to park right in front of the building at 4411 Wallingford Ave N, where there was a For Lease sign in the window. I called the landlord before dinner that night and three days later we were signing the lease. To my knowledge, the space had been on the market for a few weeks and hadn’t been advertised in any other way. It was just meant to be!

I plan on splitting my time between our two stores. We’ll have a few staff members in Wallingford as well. We essentially plan on carrying the same products in Wallingford that have proven popular in Tacoma. The only exception is that we won’t carry wine in Wallingford.